Proposes an ethics of the feminine through an examination of women’s writing.

The Hysteric’s Guide to the Future Female Subject was first published in 1999. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

How can a girl become a woman today—an ethical woman and a member of society—without being either a victim or a manipulator? Reflecting on this question, Juliet Flower MacCannell takes us for the first time beyond the flawed models for “becoming woman” left to us by Freud and Sade.Having previously explored the logic of feminine sexuality, MacCannell sets out in the Hysteric’s Guide to locate an ethics of the feminine. She does this by examining instances of the (often hysterical) feminine confrontation with (usually perverse) masculine subjects, confrontations that represent crucial scenes in the constitution of female sexuality. Her study takes us into Sadean ethics and the prescriptions of Freudian psychoanalysis; post-Enlightenment colonialism; racism during and after World War I; genocidal fascism in World War II; and the slowing of time and generation during the Cold War.MacCannell treats contemporary art, fiction, and theory, considering works by Arendt, Angelou, Rousseau, Kant, Stendhal, Kleist, Hitchcock, Atwood, Klein, Chodorow, Adorno, and Duras. Ultimately, this book reasserts “becoming woman” as an issue that has, until now, been denied for want of a feminine ethic relevant to contemporary life.

Juliet Flower MacCannell is professor emerita of comparative literature, University of California, Irvine.